I have bad news, and then good news and bad news again

Let me tell you about my life since Wednesday. Keeping in mind that this is finals week, so I have a field report, 2 research papers, a final exam and a presentation over the course over the next two days. Excellent.

BAD NEWS - I woke up, wolfed down breakfast and ran to school so that I wouldn't be late for the field trip. We were learning data collection techniques - plant cover - interesting stuff like that - in the boiling equatorial sun. I was nauseuous but didn't want to be a baby because *gulp* my newfound girl crush decided to come on the field trip with us because *swoon* she's studying botany... So not only did I hustle getting my stuff done (yeah right... when she wasn't looking I was laying in the shade of the miconia bushes we were supposed to be examining) but when we biked back I hauled ass up this steep hill that was in the beginning of our ride (immediately collapsing at the top of the hill, exhausted and wanting to barf and being completely winded for the rest of the way back... Becky had a pretty good laugh at that). Then we got back to the uni and I felt like I was on the verge of spontaneous combustion so I jumped in the water. Didn't cool me down, still felt nauseous, but girlcrush was taking a swim too so I played it cool. Then we walked a shadeless walk to grab some lunch, but as I was on fire and feeling nauseous, I just had a couple glasses of juice and headed home for a quick siesta before I began etching away at the mountains of work I had in store for the evening. I tried sleeping for an hour or so, but I decided that it must be about 200 degrees outside so I took a cold shower and went back to lay down but couldn't fall asleep.
Then it happend. And it happend for the next 36 hours. I'll spare you the details, to get an idea, I want you to remember the last time you got food poisoning and now I want you to multiply that by Ecuador.
My host mother was so worried that she checked on me every hour bringing me tea and crackers and food that just made me sick looking at, but she was really sweet the whole time. She just kept getting flustered and wanting to bring me to the hospital but I figured an Ecuadorian hospital might be a bit counterproductive. Then (awww) the little girl, Genesis, went to the store and got me an apple gatorade (1. - yeah, apple gatorade, weird. 2. in a glass bottle - why ecuadorians put their sports drinks in glass bottles i will never understand) which I drank a sip of and no sooner did she walk down the stairs but I accidentally smashed it on the floor. I tried cleaning THAT up but I couldn't sit up so I went back to sleep. When I woke up, there was broken glass and cockroaches all over my floor! Talk about a nightmare. So I took another cold shower and fell asleep on the floor of my balcony because it was colder outside, a terrible desicion from which I still have a stiff neck.
To top it off, my awesome professor wasn't accepting late field reports and it was due in the morning. So I walked back to the uni to get some work done. I threw up in the bathroom when I got there and decided it wasn't a good idea. I walked home. On my walk back, I took a different route that I thought was shorter (not always a smart experiment) and walked by a yard with a bunch of realllly adorable husky puppies. mmm.
TIME FOR THE GOOD NEWS : So on Thursday, I woke up and felt better. I couldn't keep anything down, but I didn't feel nauseous and I could walk around and stuff. I went downstairs to sit with my family while they ate and to say thanks for taking care of me and stuff. And in my living room was none other than one of those husky puppies. So I thought about that.
Thoughts:
" walked by someones yard and there were four husky puppies - 4 is my favorite number and husky puppies are my favorite puppy - SO when i wake up this morning and find a husky puppy in my living room, it's God's way of saying.... 'I'm sorry that you shit your pants and vomited all night and you had cockroaches all over your floor, here's a husky puppy' "

Genesis put an orange tee shirt on him (huskies must get pretty cold here in the Galapagos) and named him LouLou.

AND AGAIN FOR THE BAD NEWS: stupid owner came to get the puppy while i was at school.

Guitos

Hola amigos.

We saw the galapagos tortoises. weee!

We went on a Friday, which was awesome, because they have feeding days on M/W/F. The rest of the days, they fend for themselves for food, so that they learn to find their own resources and not be totally dependent on the Galapaguera volunteers. The above picture is of two turtles fighting over some leaves. Awww. They can get pretty aggressive. After I took this picture they were rockin each others shells for a while.

There is this tree called 'manzanillo' on the islands (poison apple tree) - it's indigenous to the Galapagos and it's incredibly poisonous - you pretty much get the worst hives of your life all over your body. Someone from our program got it pretty bad and almost had to go home... kind of scary because they are unmarked and everywhere -but they don't take them down because 1. they are endemic and 2. they provide food & habitat for other endemic species.

So the Galapaguera is absolutely covered in manzanillos because thats what the tortugos eat! We were dodging poison left and right.

There is a little cage for the baby tortugitos that they live in all the time. They are so tiny! They need a pretty tight cage though because rats (invasive species!) are eating them at night. Humans first brought rats over in the 1800s and they have proceeded to decrease populations of everything cool. People inadvertantly ruin everything! gah.

Highlands trip!

Heinke, my botany professor, has been pushing her luck. She has that whole, I'm from Germany/I don't shave my pits/I have the coolest jewelry you've ever seen thing going for her, but she has been too much from the beginning. I am sitting here in the Galapagos islands doing more work over the course of three days than I ever care to in a semester. To top it off, everyone failed her quiz and she complained to administration that we were stupid. Sorry, Heinke. But not really. Because your lectures suck.

So instead of celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday with all of San Cristobal, we were hiking in the highlands and doing an educational field trip examining plants or whatever. If it weren't probably the coolest thing that I've done so far on this island, I would have thrown her off the top of the volcano and named all the vegetation zones that she would have been rollin on through... Not really though! She is actually kind of cool and hardcore, which I appreciate. I would just rather have her as my friend than as my professor.

On to the amazing stuff!

So we went on a bus and headed on up to El junco near the top of the volcano. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but riding on a bus up a volcano is probably the most fun, dangerous, and motion-sickness inducing experience ever. It's like being on a roller coaster that someone has been decapitated on before. We did it a lot in Quito and I felt mostly like I was going to die, or that we would get stuck in the mud, or we would just rock too much to the right and tumble on down the volcano and explode at the bottom. On the way there, the vegetation changed completely.

In town, where I live, is very close to a beach and it is pretty populated. The zones that I live in are the littoral (coastal) zones and the arid zone which is a bit higher up. So, the vegetation is mostly low trees, cactuses, stuff like that. But when you travel higher, there are different moisture/percipitation levels and that paired with the elevation and that equals amazing jungle like environment complete with lagoons and waterfalls and tall trees and stuff. And it is away from civilization. The Charles Darwin Foundation is doing research scattered all over the place - due to habitat destruction, introduced/invasive species, and the overexploitation of resources, there are species here that are reaching critically low population levels and they do what they can to lessen the blow of human disturbance. There are nurseries all over the place for indigenous plant species so that they can repopulate the area. Here is a picture of the nurseries. Aww.

The huge problem on the Galapagos is the mora, or the blackberry. It is an invasive specie, which means that it spreads quickly on its own and outcompetes the native and endemic species for resources. Volunteers have been trying to eradicate the mora in certain areas, all done by hand. They are starting a sustainable program this October that eradicates the mora and makes marmalade out of the berries at the same time to sell to tourists. Las moras son muy ricas :) mmmm. We ate them throughout our hike. Speaking of eating delicious island fruit, in April and May I am going hiking in the highlands every day because that's fruit season! There are going to be Galapagos guayabas (I have to take a picture of this fruit, so delicious yet so, so weird) and naranjas and bananas and passionfruits mmm. We can just pick them off the trees as we walk. Below is a banana tree and that weird dark red thing is it's flower! It's one of the only plant species whose fruits grow up from it's flower. :) P.S. Bananas are not indigenous to the Galapagos!

So after walking around for a little bit we went back in the bus to the tippity top area to see the powerplant windmills. Yeah! Ecuadorians for alternative energy! It's awesome. There are three windmills now, they are strategically placed on a certain point (there was another windier spot but they were unable to put them there because they would disrupt the frigate bird nests). They are 51 meters high (oooooo) and it provides 40% of the energy for San Cristobal (aaahhhh).

Here are Becky and I being ridiculous near the windmills. Sorry I don't have a picture of those. They look like regular alternative energy windmills.

THEN we went to el junco. I am just going to copy and paste a chunk from my field report and tell you about that -

El junco is a fresh lake in the highlands of San Cristobal and is the only naturally formed fresh water area on all of the Galapagos Islands. This lake is evidence that there were once glaciers on San Cristobal. There was debate on whether or not the lake was retrieving water from the ocean, but through a mold demonstration, researchers were able to prove that it does not. El junco always has fresh water, even during serious droughts. This may be because the area has a lot of moisture and water is constantly cycling via evaporation and precipitation.
Recently, the introduced fish species telapia was found in the lake, numbering at about 40,000. The fish, most popularly raised through aquaculture, is an omnivore usually fed only algae. However, in El junco, the telapia were feeding off of the crustaceans that were living in the lake and it was decided that they should be eradicated. So, researchers extracted a poison from the roots of barbascos, a tree found in the Amazon. Because they wanted to leave the crustaceans unharmed, researchers tested the crustacean’s reactions to the poison over a three month period. They decided that the barbasco poison harmed only the fish in the lake, and were able to remove the species.
The area surrounding the lake was once covered by the invasive blackberry species that have recently been removed by hand by volunteers. Also, there are plots located in the area with patches of miconia in order to test how feasible it would be to grow the native miconia. There needs to be more species richness so that invaders do not take over the area.
From this view, we were able to see a couple of greenhouses in the lower vegetation zones. Greenhouses are reducing the amount of insects, are able to grow food all year round, and in turn lessening the Galapagueñan dependency on mainland shipments of tomatoes and other staples. There are eleven greenhouses on Santa Cruz, two on Floreana, and two on San Cristobal with three on the way.

Then we went to a campground which was a really neat set up, but it was too dark out by that time to take any cool pictures. We had a campfire and talked about the ghost stories and legends of san cristobal. Heinke (my professor) and her partner John shared with us some of their own really freaky ghost stories. She believes in ghosts! I think that's so weird and really cool at the same time because she is a scientist. To be spiritual and to be scientific is a happy medium. A few of us wandered away from the campfire and checked out the stars. This is one of the things I was so excited for! I am away from the mainland, away from society and pop culture and tall buildings with light pollution - and here are the stars, the brightest and clearest I have ever seen them. All the constellations are different - I can see all of Orien and I have to really look for the Big Dipper but the rest are pretty much different. We are going to try to learn them while we are here. We laid down in the grass for a good while and Scott led us through a guided meditation, which always makes me wish that my entire life was one giant guided meditation. It was an amazing day!

Happy Darwin's 200th Birthday!

It was two days ago, but that doesn't stop the Galapaguenos from partying for an entire week.

Here are some fun facts about Charlie Darwin, besides that he is the god of my individualized major:

• He beleived that God had something to do with evolution.
• He was organized and scientific about everything, he even wrote a pros and cons list of getting married before he proposed to his wife (who was, by the way, his cousin)
• Aaaaand (dun dun dun) he believed that the Galapagos islands were foul and ugly and he was repulsed by the animals and vegetation.

So screw you, Charles Darwin, but happy birthday and thanks for the theory!

The celebrations thus far have been pretty cute. My host father, actually, dressed up as Charles Darwin and did a little skit in front of the whole island. He wore a white beard made of cotton balls and wore a peach cap to represent a bald head. Then pretended to come to an island and investigate a plant. There have been competitions for kayaking, canoeing, swimming, Queen Galapagos, stuff like that all day. There was a little parade around town and everything. I wasn't able to see a lot of the festivities because I have two research papers, a presentation, a field report, and an exam due on Friday. (That's right, Mom. You will be happy to know that I am in fact in school rather than a 4 and a half month vacation.)

Valentine's day is definitely not the hallmark holiday that it is in the United States. The locals say they like to go out to dinner and dance or whatever but they don't make a big deal about it. In the morning we had flowers on the table and chocolates and my host parents were wearing all red, which was adorable. Little paper red hearts are hanging from the trees around town. It's so cute! Other than that, though, there weren't many traces of el dia de San Valentin. Which is good, because Valentine's day in the United States is a useless holiday except for being my dad's valentine, candy hearts with the words, chocolate sales a few days afterwards, and of course, candy underwear.

hey y'all, i'm an islander now

Well guys, I have to be honest, I probably will never see you again. I miss you all so much, but the only way I'm leaving the Galapagos is floating across the ocean back to you in a coffin. Or whenever my visa runs out. Whichever comes first.

My host family is, for the Ecuadorian culture, pretty unconventional. Doris and Antonio, my host parents, are living together in sin, as my mom likes to say. (Antonio is divorced, and they haven't married.) I also have a host sister, her name is Genesis, she is adopted and she is 6, and I will probably keep her around because every morning when I roll out of bed with an afro of unneccessarily frizzy hair and an awkward, uneven sunburn she smiles at me and tells me that I am beautiful. She is beautiful, actually. I will post pictures of my host family soon. I think Genesis may be sick, though (I don't know if I've mentioned this... but around 85 % of the population here on the Galapagos has HIV). I think that she is sick because she has been traveling back and forth to Guayaquil, where there is better medical facilities, and also she is pale, probably from staying indoors a lot. A lot of the population is infected, but so far nothing has been discussed in the household and I am not about to ask.

Antonio has a bunch of little jobs, one of which I am convinced is a babysitter. Either that or children flock to him and spend their siestas playing with his big belly and watching TV in their tiny living room. Even infants find their way to Antonio. So yeah, he must be a babysitter.

Doris is an English teacher (at first I thought - score! But she makes me speak Spanish all the time) and she also runs a hostel and I am staying there with a girl from my program. I guess there will be people running in and out all the time. But I have to say, I am so happy to be rooming with Amanda! It was a lonely thought thinking I would be in this host family situation by myself. She isn't from my circle of friends here but she is positive, active, and really fun to be around. She is blonde, so she gets a lot of attention from Ecuadorians. She walks by and they just look at her and say "ooooo, mira, rubia!" (oooh look, blonde girl). She is 20 and engaged! Ahh! She got engaged when she was 18. Clearly, she knows what she wants. Haaha. Her fiancee and mother are actually coming to visit around the same time as Nathan.

Oh I didn't tell you! Nathan is visiting!! Aaahhh :) :) He has been working extra hard in Boston and he is going to come see me before he does his study abroad semester in Chile. And hopefully, I will be able to visit him after I finish up in the Galaps:) It will definitely break up this not-seeing-each-other for 7 months ordeal and also, I reaaaallly wanna go and see Chile. And Peru. But there is a good chance that I will be traveling alone so Peru probably isn't in the cards.

ANYWAY, the living quarters are humble ones and that's fine with me. My other friends have pretty sweet setups and their own huge rooms and bathrooms and all that, but I'm happier this way. I never had that much personal space to begin with and I have come to realize that when I have too much space to my own I don't really know what to do with it. Not to mention, wealty people like to put introduced plant species in their gardens that attract roachesPlus, I have a hammocking area! SCORE! The only downside to living with a less wealthy family, though, is the food. On the first day, I told Antonio that I was a vegetarian, so I had refried KFC chicken with french fries and mayonaisse for lunch. The family is on a diet, I guess, so we had french fries and chicken hotdogs for breakfast. Yeah, I dunno about this Ecuadorian food. The ketchup isn't even real ketchup. Kim, you would probably hate it here for that reason. Everything is fried with white rice. And frankly, I'm getting a bit fat! So I've been trying to stay active and cut out the ice cream and beer. Emphasis on trying.

Anyway, the food might be the worst idea Ecuador has ever had, second to drilling in the Amazon of course, but the biodiversity and beautiful environment certainly makes up for it. This is the most beautiful place that I will ever spend time in, poverty, HIV, refried KFC and all.

the galaps

well i don't have any pictures to post yet, but believe me when i tell you that i am living in paradise for the next three months. i may have shit out all my digestive organs by the time i return home to massachusetts, but guaranteed i will feel extremely relaxed and content about it.

... the ecuadorian illness got worse in that i was up until 6am the other night with wrenching stomach pains and explosive you know whats. i was literally outside of the bathroom door until 5:45am talking to nathan on my computer (thanks for staying up with me btw <3) while running back and forth to the toilet.

anyway, the point is, i got here and swam with sea lions, chilled with marine iguanas and crabbes, got dangerously close to a pelican, saw my first sunset in the galapagos, found out that sea kayaking is 5 bucks ALL DAY, and to top it all off i bought a hammock in otavalo and i'm going to use it at my homestay house todos los dias que paso aqui.

i definitely miss my parents, my family, my friends, my cats, my spongy pillow and memory foam, and american food a LOT (maybe my boyfriend too, a little bit) so if they could all come here life would be perfect. but i think, for the next three months, the galapagos islands will just have to do...